Re: <nettime> Digital leftism in a globalised world?

[Alexander Bard <bardissimo@gmail.com>]

   Dear Carlo
   My excuses for being rude in my response to you. And please understand
   moderators took notice too.
   That behaviour was completely unwarranted of me and I ask you to accept
   my full apologies.
   However, my asking all members of this list to not throw around the
   label "neoliberalism" lightly had nothing to do with you or your
   posting and neither did I claim that.
   What I did however respond to from your specific posting was the idea
   that international trade is some kind of an internal affair in between
   nation-states and little or nothing else. That might have been seen as
   a valid arguement 300 years ago, but its is hardly what international
   trade is today. The world is not a competition between national powers.
   Inter-state tade is rather less than 1% of overall global trade today.
   Trade has rather become a multitude of forces and interests of which
   nation-states play an incredibly small if any part.
   This is what I meant with opposing you taking a North Korean approach
   to trade. Or a Trumpist-populist approach to trade if you wish.
   From a Marxist internationalist perspective this makes little or no
   sense. Such a radical nationalist isolationist approach should frankly
   rather be described as the utter reactionism that it is.
   As for the examples from a British professor in Paris you mention they
   are all taken from a colonial past where the destructive colonialist
   effects of the measures involved were not taken into picture. Scottish
   trade barriers had a target and that target was hardly English or
   German producers but rather producers in colonised territories whose
   industralisation was delayed by some 200 years due to racist trade
   barriers in colonial Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries up to
   European trade barriers against African cotton and food products to
   this very day.
   Which reminds me of rule #1 in discussing international trade: it can
   not be taken seriously unless full global implications of trade rules
   are taken into perspective. Believe it or not, the economy has been
   globalised ever since The Silk Route's golden days. It is just the size
   of the trade whic has exploded in recen decades. To the benefit of
   hundreds of millions of Indian, Chinese, Indonesian and other people.
   So my mistake was to act out frustration in a completely unacceptable
   manner.
   But my main argument that we must not fall into Trumpist argumentation
   on trade without very good reasons is still adamant. Trump lied
   massively to his voters. The real danger now lies in where and when
   they will turn the disappointment this populism will create.
   Whatever happened to Marxism and its conditional internationalism and
   borderless solidarity here?
   Because if it can be saved we can discuss taxation rather than trade
   barriers. Distributed wealth is way way more benefitial for an
   egalitarian society than trade barriers ever could be. And I insist on
   that stance until I have seen proper arguments for the opposite.
   Funnily I have searched for those atguments through the last 300 years
   of economics literature and never found them. But I'm still all ears.
   Until then I belong to the vast majority of Socialists who are in
   principle pro free trade. Leftist Trumpism is just not my thing.
   Best intentions
   Alexander Bard

   2017-01-27 17:40 GMT+01:00 carlo von lynX <lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>:

     On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 03:34:05PM +0100, Alexander Bard wrote:

     >    Excuse me, but what kind of world do you live in?
     >    A world where all property is owned by nation-state governments as if
     >    they were all North Korean dictatorships? And the globe is a
     >    competetion for most evil between these states and nothing else? Have
     >    you even heard of transnational movement?

     This has not been the topic of conversation in this thread, but you are free 
     to start it.
 <...>

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